New Theatre, Oxford
Thursday, 10 September 2026
I have never considered myself a devoted Yes fan. I play their music when I’m in the mood, but they are not a band I regularly revisit with the same deep craving or nostalgia as others. However, the remarkable experience I enjoyed last night certainly changes that.
Jon Anderson & The Band Geeks played at the New Theatre, Oxford and, quite unexpectedly, gave me one of the best musical experiences of my life. I am still trying to work out why and how it happened. Sometimes it is probably best not to overthink things too much, for fear of spoiling the magic. Maybe the experiences we take away from some gigs resist explanation and simply demand we surrender and enjoy them.
What I can say, however, is this: the music we are fortunate to hear from the moment the band steps onto the stage is exhilarating; it sparkles with a joyful, exuberant presence. Across the evening, we never feel we are being treated to ‘classic’ pieces dusted off and presented in a well-preserved state, like museum pieces behind glass. The music is genuinely, scintillatingly alive. Close to the Edge, Awaken, Starship Trooper, decades of Yes’s most ambitious material, all comfortably standing alongside songs from the forthcoming album, seamless, as one. The new sits comfortably with the old, and both sound and flow as if they belong to the same breath. Fluid. Organic. Still growing, evolving, all these years later.
With True released in 2024, and Anderson telling us a second album is due later this year, the tour name, “Yes: Epics, Classics and More,” deliberately hints at what is to come. We are not here to see an ageing act revisiting old glories, but a band still creatively building. The classic Yes catalogue forms the foundation, and everything else emerges from it.
The musicianship is extraordinary. Individually, each musician is exceptional, their seemingly effortless technique carrying infectious passion and nuance. Collectively, wow! They combine to form a single voice, staggering in its unity and breathtaking in their interplay, the kind of playing achieved only through deep, inherent trust in one another. This trust shows everywhere, particularly in Anderson himself, who stands on a raised dais, conducting the band with a ribboned tambourine, and in the fondness with which he speaks about his bandmates between songs. Love, respect, and a mutually shared vision.
At one point during Awaken, I realise my hands are moving without even noticing. Waving, clapping. Slapping my knees in time. Enraptured, followed by something deeper: pulled out of myself into the moment, feeling one with the music and, beyond that, one with an audience clearly feeling the same. Only live music exerts this odd, peculiar and magical pull, an irresistible impulse which has no other response than to let go, to be carried along in the musical eddies and currents, swept up inside the joy and wonder of the moment.
It carries me away completely. The feeling is instantly recognisable, because I felt the same thing at Bon Jovi the previous Sunday night. “There it is.” The second time I have been lucky enough to say this in the same week. The reason I fell in love with music in the first place. The reason live music, at its best, is visceral and powerful in a way nothing else can match.
An unspoken connection exists between band and audience. The contagious, respectful joy which fills the stage from start to finish is alive, genuine, and in the moment. The room feels it, catches it, delights in it. We respond, as one.
Then we come to the final song of the evening, and Jon Anderson dances with his wife. She wears blue. Arm in arm, they gently twirl to one side of the stage. I have never seen anything like it, yet it feels entirely right. It seems the whole point of the evening has finally arrived. The sense of wonder and transcendence Yes have spent five decades trying to capture, universal connection, oneness, dissolving the distances between people, is there before us with supreme elegance and finesse in the form of an 81-year-old man and his wife, dancing lovingly together.
I go in as someone who has never considered himself a Yes person. I leave buoyant and elated, with no idea what to call myself, only the blissful satisfaction of what I am feeling. Enthralled. Enrapt. Grateful. For anyone who has followed Anderson’s post-Yes work, this tour feels like the most convincing realisation yet of his long-standing ambition: the spirit of Yes is alive and well, a continuing conversation still being written.
SETLIST
Close to the Edge
Perpetual Change
Counties and Countries
And You and I
Giving Is Living
Soon
– Interval –
Awaken
I’ve Seen All Good People
Once Upon a Dream
Leaves of Green
Starship Trooper
Roundabout
MUSICIANS
Jon Anderson – Vocals, Acoustic Guitar, Percussion
Angus Clark – Guitar, Backing Vocals
Chris Clark – Keyboards, Backing Vocals
Phil Castellano – Keyboards, Electric & Acoustic Guitars, Backing Vocals
Richie Castellano – Bass, Backing Vocals
Andy Ascolese – Drums, Keyboards, Backing Vocals
LINKS
Jon Anderson & the Band Geeks – Website | Facebook | Website (The Band Geeks) | Facebook (The Band Geeks)
